RIAA says sales are down. SoundScan says “No way.” Who should you believe?

In April of 2004 I was working on a piece for Keyboard magazine about bar codes. I was trying to determine if the “free” barcode many CD Replicators provide is a real added value to the indie artist, or just a bogus premium.

But what evolved was a much bigger and more important story. Talking to SoundScan revealed a massive mistruth disseminated by the RIAA about the reality of declining record sales.

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Through my investigation I learned things that would contradict reported statements by the RIAA. Mainly that US labels have had a significant reduction in sales from 2000-2004.

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Did you know that Facebook is making some big changes this month to the way Fan pages work?

I had no idea until I read two posts on Tight Mix Blog. So I thought sharing my new found knowledge would be a great use of February’s Post of the Month.

With this new functionality, it will be much easier for artists to customize their pages, capture fans email addresses, share content with users, and monetize their Facebook page.

The only downside is that you have to figure out how to work the new Facebook functions.

Luckily, Tight Mix Blog gives you step by step instructions that will make sense even to those of you who, like myself, aren’t very tech savvy. So no excuses!

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